Portal:Current events/2004 September 27
September 27, 2004 (Monday)
- Arab-Israeli conflict:
- Jewish settlers in Gaza line a bridge and pelt passing Palestinian cars with rocks, forcing the Israeli army to close the only road from the north into the Gaza Strip. (The Guardian)
- In the Gaza Strip, four Palestinians kidnap Riad Abu Ali, an Israeli citizen working for CNN. Two other CNN employees were beaten and their equipment stolen. (Reuters) (Haaretz)
- The Israeli army raids the West Bank city of Jenin, taking over a hospital and several other buildings, making a number of arrests, and reportedly wounding three Palestinians. Several other violent incidents occurred in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (The Australian) (BBC)
- A 'senior' Israeli security source has told several news organizations (Including the BBC, Haaretz and the AP) that it was Israel who killed a senior figure of Hamas, Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil, who died in a car bomb yesterday, September 26 in Damascus. (BBC) (Dispatch) (Haaretz) (Gulf Daily News)
- Hamas states that an unnamed Arab state may have aided Israel in the assassination of Hamas leader Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil. (Haaretz) (Reuters) Archived 2005-03-13 at the Wayback Machine
- Conflict in Iraq:
- Fereidoun Jahani, an Iranian diplomat who was kidnapped in Iraq in early August, is freed; he was held by a militant group that also claims to be holding two French journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot. (BBC) (Reuters) Archived 2005-04-08 at the Wayback Machine
- The U.S. military carries out air strikes on several suspected militant positions in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, killing at least five people and wounding 46, according to a local hospital official. The U.S. military disputes that total. (AP) (BBC)
- Two separate car bombs kill at least seven Iraqi national guardsmen in Mosul and Fallujah, while mortars are fired at a police academy in Baghdad, with no reported casualties. (AP: 1, 2)
- The Virgin Group announces that it will create the world's first commercial space-flight company, to be called Virgin Galactic, using SpaceShipOne technology licensed from Mojave Aerospace Ventures. Virgin hopes to begin commercial space flight within five years. (BBC)
- The Université de Montréal announces that a Quebec researcher has discovered a lost play by Alexandre Dumas, père, titled Les voleurs d'or ("The Gold Thieves"), in the archives of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library of France). (Herald Sun)